set in Shan Ywar Thit, Myanmar
Mother was the only one not wearing thanaka, or the only one continuing to not wear thanaka, and that certainly made her feel different from her in-laws. As she cut the bamboo shoots that her older sister-in-law brought from the forest, she felt like the women were staring at her. They were always staring at her. It was one thing if she had just come from Yangon a day ago, but they had already been here for more than a week since Father wanted to spend some time in his native village after the funeral of his mother. Even during her past trips they had not stared this much. It was like they were thinking out loud that Mother was no longer some strange woman from the city who had married into the family.
It was like they were really trying to figure out who she was.
She finished cutting the bamboo shoots. The husks were in a pile at her feet, and the fleshy bamboo pieces clung together like chicken shreds. She swept the husks to the side of the settlement, into the mud underneath. As she did so, she locked eyes with one of the daughters of Father’s brothers, who was breastfeeding her own daughter. The woman put on a long and gleeful smile that puffed out the earthy ground bark paste on her cheeks. Mother wasn’t sure if she was smiling out of politeness because Mother was still a foreigner in the village, or if she was starting to feel like Mother was someone she knew.
It had been over a week since they arrived, and the chores of village life were starting to feel familiar to her. The Kayin village of Shan Ywar Thit was in a lowland area with rivers and forest. The main river was some kilometres away from the village shacks that the people sat in or worked around. Other than that, there was nothing else. Mother was used to the city of Yangon, which was crowded and clustered and full of people and stores and cars and streets pungent with the smells of rotting fish and trash. It wasn’t bad to be in a place where nothing happened, where the odours were earthy and fresh rather than a nuisance to the nose.
Mother passed Sa, her younger sister-in-law, or the wife of Father’s young brother. Sa was sitting on a stool and showing off her gold tooth with a smile. “You really are getting used to living here,” she said.
Every day, when Mother passed by Sa, she would make it a point to say, “You really are getting used to living here.” She made the same comment each time, as if Mother were still a novelty to her. Mother tired of hearing it, but she also liked Sa. Sa was someone who spoke what was on her mind, smiled because she felt like it, did her chores, and never complained. She was simple, to the point, and knew how to live her life. Mother liked her a lot more than her other sister-in-law, Zin, who liked to spend her time smoking cigarettes in private places and chewing betel nut. At least Zin was not living a double life, unlike her own husband, Saw, who flagrantly flirted with other women openly.
Mother was about to return to her cooking when Sa said something else, a question she had not asked before.
“Why don’t you have a long neck?”
Mother paused in her steps. Sa was referring to the fact that Mother and Father were both from the Karen community in Myanmar, a community whose women wore long golden coils which elongated their necks. Mother had grown up in the Kayah state amongst the Kayan people, a sub-community of Karens. The reason Mother did not have a neck that was longer than the average Burmese person was because, unlike her mother, Mother had grown up in the state’s capital of Loikaw, and her father was a strict Christian. The Christian aspect of life would be easy for Sa to understand given how many people in Kayin were also Christian, but Mother did not know if Sa was familiar with general Kayan culture, given that she rarely left her village.
Mother decided to change the subject.
“How is your grandson?”
Sa’s eyes beamed brightly. Her leg started to swing back and forth as she sat on the stool. It didn’t matter that Mother had forgotten the boy’s name or in fact how many grandchildren Sa actually had. Grandparents loved to talk about their grandchildren.
“He’s too naughty. I think he has adopted a street dog. I told him not to bring that street dog inside. But the street dog is so small,” Sa explained using her palms, measuring out the size of the puppy. “And they are so cute together. They play like two little children. My son is good with taking pictures. I do not know how to use my phone.” Sa reached for her flip phone, trying to figure out how to show Mother what she was referring to. Mother helped her to find the right folder for the pictures. “See!” Sa exclaimed. They were cute pictures of a little boy and a dog playing in the mud.
Mother was smiling, though a pit started to form inside of her. She had played with this child before, had even seen the dog with him. She enjoyed how the boy would come up to her, embrace her leg for no reason, and ask to sit in her lap and be told stories about the origins of the various nats of the village. But he was not her grandchild. Sa’s son, unlike Mother’s son, had married at the proper age, was having many children, and Sa was enjoying the life that came with that. That was something Mother knew she could never experience. It was the truth of her life that she didn’t exactly accept but that she knew could never be changed.
Mother felt a grimness come over her, an anger and sadness and disappointment. But she didn’t want her emotions to infect the innocuously happy Sa.
“I have some work to do,” she said in an attempt to take her leave.
She turned away from Sa. She planned to go back inside, back to her chores, though she would have not forgotten this feeling. It would have stayed in the back of her mind as she cut the vegetables and fish. She would launch angry diatribes in her mind not only against Son but against all of these villagers for living their simple village life in a country falling apart to negligence and coups.
Sa said something that stopped Mother in her tracks.
“Do you want to see my grandson?”
Mother found it an odd question to ask.
“I have met him several times,” was her immediate retort. “We see each other every day.”
But Sa had already gotten off her stool and left the settlement. It was like Mother wasn’t speaking the same language, though to be fair Mother had learned their branch of the language only after marriage, and she still struggled to speak it properly.
Sa returned quickly, and in came the little boy, looking irrationally shy, like he was being introduced to a person he had never met before.
“Ko, do you know who this is?”
The boy nodded and said, “Auntie,” without much thought. He looked up at Mother, then looked back down at the floor. Suddenly, he gave a naughty smile. “Grandma, did I do something wrong?”
Mother burst into laughter. “No, nothing wrong. I’m just thinking that you are too cute.”
Ko liked the compliment. He came up to her and hugged her leg, just like how he always did, but this time a new warmth radiated from him. “I know that. I never do anything wrong.”
Mother replied instinctually, “Then why is the mud you played in all over the wooden floor?”
There was a patchy grey trail coming in from outside.
Ko and Sa laughed with abandon, and Mother couldn’t help but laugh because everyone was laughing. It was okay, she realised, to enjoy this moment. She wasn’t in Yangon right now where everyone was a neighbour or a friend of choice. She was in her husband’s native village, where, through marriage, she was one of them.
Interacting with this little boy and having the chance to giggle and joke was something Mother wished she could experience every day. It was like eating ice cream while in a foreign country, a gift she didn’t know she was craving. Or rather, a gift she knew would be so impossible for her to receive that she often erased the thought of it from her mind.
Mother spent the rest of the afternoon with the boy. She let him show her the dog and the places where they played. She was supposed to go back to help with lunch, but no one came to get her. They were not going to. They were letting time pass as it was supposed to: without consideration, without fear of consequence, without the cognisance of life being something that others strived for rather than lived in the moment.